


With an Asterisk

by Infinite_Monkeys



Series: All Our Yesterdays And Days To Come [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Basically Brodinsons in Night Vale, Crack Crossover, Crack Treated Seriously, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Crack, Game Night, Gen, Librarians (wtnv), They Aren't Great At It But They're Trying, Trying to Work Past Their Issues, Typical Night Vale Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 17:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19835404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Infinite_Monkeys/pseuds/Infinite_Monkeys
Summary: Family isn't always easy. It's harder when your brother has a massive breakdown, tries to conquer several worlds, and then moves out to the weirdest part of the desert while cutting ties with most of his past.But Thor's willing to try, and he thinks Loki is, too.





	With an Asterisk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mercia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercia/gifts).



> Hello! This fic is a gift to the lovely Mercia, who has been in turns one of my favorite Marvel fic authors, a cool friend, and an incredibly encouraging cheerleader for my own writing endeavors. This particular story was inspired in part by their great analysis of the brodinsons' relationship in this series, and I hope it does it justice!

It took nearly a month for Thor to take Loki up on his offer to visit him in Night Vale. 

Truth be told, not that he'd tell it to anyone, the prospect intimidated him. Yes, Loki was his brother, and yes, he had an explicit invitation. But they'd grown distant, and in a way the distance felt further now than it had even when they'd been fighting opposite one another. Then, he'd been so sure that if he could just reach his brother he could save him, bring him home. Now, though, Loki seemed satisfied with the home he had and not particularly in need of saving.

But the distance remained, and Thor wasn't quite sure what to make of it. It didn't fit with the story he'd told himself, and now their relationship was awkward, like a bone that had broken and healed in the wrong shape. 

In the end, it had taken the prodding of his friends—“Oh my _gosh_ , Point Break, for the love of all that is good and holy stop moping and go see your brother”—to motivate him, and once the decision had been made he'd been filled with this curious mixture of lightness and underlying anxiety. The former had won out, though, and by the time he'd managed to rent an old beat-up SUV (flying via Mjolnir would be conspicuous, and he didn't particularly want to invite SHIELD along, which would be the inevitable condition of borrowing a helicopter) he was looking forward to the trip. 

Driving through the desert took far longer than he had expected, and the car's air conditioning system struggled to bring its interior down to a reasonable temperature. He wondered why Loki would have, _could_ have chosen to live out in the sand and blistering sun, Loki who'd complained about playing outside in the summer, who'd come down with heat exhaustion on a trip to Vanaheim, Loki who was Jotunn under his Aesir skin, even if the thought still resonated strangely. He twisted the dial to turn up the AC, a compulsive if futile gesture when it was already on its highest setting. 

His GPS, it seemed, was not responsible for the designation of ‘smart’ that had been applied to the phone Stark had given him. It took him in winding, meandering circles, and eventually he shut it off and just drove towards the electric feeling of the town's magic pulsing against his skin. A less precise method of navigation, perhaps, but at least accurate enough to bring him within sight of the Night Vale skyline, a fluorescent red Arby's sign floating above the squat buildings common to this part of New Mexico. He parked in the restaurant's lot and climbed out into a heat blistering enough to convince him the air conditioning had been doing something, after all. 

Finding Loki's house even within the town proved to be difficult, and it took several times to realize that “it's the one that doesn't exist” was intended as actual directions rather than an attempt to convince him that his brother did not, in fact, live here. He had apologized profusely to the small man he had threatened, and after spending a moment looking offended he had helpfully pointed Thor in the direction of the Desert Creek Housing Development. “It's in back of the elementary school,” he said, and before Thor could ask which building that was, he had gone. 

The house that didn't exist looked awfully like it existed. There were houses on either side of it, too, so it would make more sense for it to be there than not, and it had a porch and, surprisingly for the desert, a lawn when most of the surrounding houses sported more climate-appropriate adornments. A closer look and he thought he recognized the grass as being native to the cooler poles of Muspelheim, though, so perhaps it was hardy enough to belong, despite its appearance. 

A large square, nearly twenty feet on diameter, had been stamped into the grass, everything within it crushed flat as a sheet of paper. He stared at the smashed area for a few seconds before moving on to knock at the door. 

He knocked once, twice, and had nearly given up when the door swung open. “I've told you before,” Loki grumbled, “I don't need a summoning permit if I—” he stopped mid sentence, staring, with a look on his face like he was contemplating closing the door again. “Thor,” he said at last, but no more of a welcome than that. 

“Loki. I was hoping...” He trailed off, cursing internally because he didn't really have anything particular in mind. The assumption that something would fall into place when he arrived seemed foolishly optimistic now, in the moment. “Would you like to do something?” A blank stare. Curse him for thinking this would be easy. “Eat lunch or...” did they have hunts on Midgard? Epic quests? What did one _do_ here with distant acquaintances who were also your estranged brother? “...go to a movie,” he finished lamely. 

“Not today,” Loki said simply, and moved as though to shut the door. Thor caught it before it could close, and Loki sighed and stepped outside, shutting it behind him. 

“You said I could visit,” he said, and it sounded almost petulant.

“I did.” Loki met his eyes, his expression unreadable. “But I have a life here, with responsibilities and obligations and errands and friends, and I can't drop all of that every time you show up and want to _play_.” His expression softened just slightly, and he gripped the back of Thor's neck, the gesture natural even if it was jarringly reversed. “Come back, Thor,” he said earnestly. “I'm glad you came but I have no time for you today.”

With that he let the hand drop, and turned, and started to walk away.

“Wait.” He had the ridiculous feeling as he reached out that he was grasping at the last straws of what hung between them, reaching out for the ghost of the years they had spent together, or maybe whatever relationship they could build in the future if the one from the past was doomed to fade. Loki stopped, and Loki turned, and he felt a surge of almost crushing relief. “You are right, I cannot ask you to leave your responsibilities every time I show up. But might I—would it be all right if I came along?”

Loki hesitated, watching him almost suspiciously until he relented. “I don't see why not,” he said at last, “though I doubt these errands will interest you, and you must listen when I tell you something. I'll not have a repeat of that fiasco in the library.” 

The happiness he felt at Loki's agreement battled with alarm. “You intend to go _back_ there?” 

“Yes. I go there on rather a regular basis. Don't tell me you're afraid?” 

“Of course not.” His hand found Mjolnir's handle, and Loki frowned at him. 

“We should establish some rules,” he said. “While we are in the library you are not to speak, or stomp around, or do any of the...” 

Thor found his attention drifting. The look on Loki's face while he lectured Thor struck him with its familiarity, so similar to the Loki from before that it made his heart clench. The growing annoyance, too, was familiar, enough so that it took him several seconds to realize Loki must be waiting for a response. 

“What?” 

“Do you agree not to pick a fight with the Librarians, under any circumstances?” Thor blinked. 

“Agreed,” he said, because that seemed like the right answer. 

Loki studied him for a few seconds more, then relented. “Fine. Follow me, I don't expect you remember your way around.”

Thor nodded, and fell into step beside his brother for the first time in what felt like centuries. 

* * *

Loki stopped halfway down the driveway, rolled his eyes, and said “Seriously? Again?” in a tone of voice that made Thor wonder how he could have offended his brother so quickly, when he hadn't _done_ anything yet. He had a defensive reply at the ready when Loki moved away, staring at the stamped-down patch of grass in exasperation. Thor heaved an internal sigh of relief that the exclamation hadn't been directed at him, then wandered over to peer at the unassuming square depression. 

“What is it?” Thor asked, while Loki stuck a hand out to hover above the grass. 

“Nothing, now.” He sighed. “It's the stupid invisible clock tower. It teleports to random spots around town, and it is at worst a hazard and at best,” he gestured to the lawn, “a landscaping nuisance. It's going to crush someone one of these days if we aren't careful. I'm working on a way to track its movements, but it's proving a challenge.” 

“One I'm sure you'll overcome,” Thor said, and he felt himself grow a little defensive at Loki's surprise. He had expressed his confidence in Loki's skills in the past, after all, if not perhaps with the frequency his brother's ego seemed to require. 

Loki straightened. “There's nothing to be done about it now,” he mumbled, and when he started walking again it was quick enough that Thor had to jog a few steps to catch up. 

They wound their way through the streets, stopping every so often to chat with the mortals they passed. “This is Thor,” Loki would introduce him, and he'd merit a nod or handshake or “Oh, your brother Thor? How nice to meet you...” before the topic of conversation turned back to invisible corn or the community calendar or that thing with the obelisks, wasn't that strange? 

But at last they made it to the Night Vale Public Library, and the stone walls rose up in front of them. The exterior of the building reminded Thor of a memorial, or perhaps a headstone: not because of any physical resemblance, but because it seemed to radiate that same unspoken demand for reverence and silence. 

“Remember,” Loki said, his voice low, “you are not to speak a word once we're within those walls. No sounds, either. Walk lightly. Don't even _breathe_ too loudly.” 

Thor nodded, and together they stepped over the yellow caution tape that ringed the perimeter, printed with warnings like “Danger: Librarian Nests In This Area” and “Stop Ye Seekers of Forsaken Knowledge” and “dude, you don't want to go in here dude, no seriously we mean it”. The doors slid open on well-oiled hinges, and then they were inside, standing among the towering shelves. 

Loki strolled almost casually towards the nearest one. Thor moved more slowly, eyes darting to the shadows, tense fingers brushing the handle of his weapon. He'd promised not to start a fight, but if the need arose, he'd finish one. He remembered the Librarians. 

Loki trailed silent fingers over the books' spines before choosing one; he drew a sheet of paper from a dimensional pocket, consulted it, then vanished it away again. That done, he beckoned Thor over and handed him the book to carry while he moved off towards another shelf. 

The arrangement had one notable flaw; should they be attacked, Thor could do little about it with his arms loaded down with books. 

He moved over to where his brother rifled silently through another shelf and gave the perimeter one last check before leaning in to whisper his concerns, but the words wouldn't come. Another try and the results were the same; not a single sound made it past his lips. He scowled his frustration and tapped Loki on the shoulder. 

He jumped and spun around—more tense than he let on, then—and fixed Thor with a glare. 

Thor jabbed him in the shoulder with a finger and then pointed to his own throat. 

Loki waved his hands in exasperation, as though to say _what are you fussing about,_ and _it's no great thing_. 

Thor shook the book, and gestured to his hammer. _How can I use this if I'm stuck carrying these around?_

Loki threw his arms wide. _Why are you like this_ , the gesture seemed to say. 

Then he froze, right in the middle of Thor's stubborn arm-cross of _this is important, and you need to listen_ , and stared off in a different direction entirely. 

Thor followed his gaze. A Librarian stood in the aisle, looking back and forth between them with disapproval so heavy it was nearly a physical thing. 

Together, they spread their hands in an apologetic gesture that made Thor feel like a chastened child. The Librarian gave them a reproachful nod before moving off. 

They waited together until it had moved out of sight to exhale, then Loki motioned him forward, pulling another book from the shelf. They crept silently about until he'd gathered a good dozen more, Loki checking the list periodically, then Thor stood guard while they checked out at a surprisingly modern computer terminal. 

Once they had safely made it outside and stepped back over the caution tape, though, Thor rounded on his brother. 

“Why would you do that?” The pile of books shifted in his arms, and he had to swerve to keep one from falling. 

“What, keep you from bringing a swift and painful death down on our heads? I would think it would be obvious.” 

“I wasn't—” 

“If you hadn't tried to talk, you wouldn't know about the silencing spell, would you?” 

The glared at each other for a short minute more. Thor thought it was somewhat unfair that he had to glare around the stack of books he still held, but not enough that he set them down. 

“We should deliver these,” Loki said at last, gesturing to the books. 

“Fine.”

“I warn you,” Loki said, “some of the people we'll be meeting are rather...” 

“Odd?” Thor suggested. 

Loki smiled. “Now that is a given.”

* * *

Thor's definition of ‘odd’ expanded over the course of the next couple hours. Some of the town's denizens were human, or at least, _almost_ human, but others...they'd delivered a book to a literal five-headed dragon, who had thanked them politely with his gold head while a green head spit threats at Thor from behind two of the dragon's legs. Thor had chosen to politely pretend not to hear them, in part because Loki had given him a warning look around the stack of books Thor had somehow still ended up carrying, and in part because it felt strange to pick a fight with a being while also having a polite conversation about the weather with them. 

“Anyways, thank you for the book and y'all have a good day now,” the gold head said. “You too, Luke's brother.” 

The dragon flapped his wings and rose slowly in the air, while the green head hissed “Watch your back, pathetic little cloud-god” and pointed from his own eyes to Thor and back again with two long talons. 

They moved on, ducking into a nearly-abandoned bowling alley and dodging an employee who shrieked at them and waved a pair of shoes so old they had probably developed sentience by now. Seeing a familiar face was nearly a relief, until he placed why, exactly, the face was familiar. 

“Oh, it's the pancake chef!” she said when she saw him. Thor grimaced at the reminder, and he could feel his brother's curious eyes on him as the older lady patted his arm. 

“I have many skills,” he muttered defensively, then glanced around the bowling alley, checking for angels. He didn't see any, but that would be more reassuring if he were looking for something more consistently corporeal. 

“There's no need to be embarrassed,” she said. “They were decent pancakes.” 

“We brought you something to read,” Loki said when it became apparent Thor had no answer for that. “It's a new series but I suspect you'll enjoy it.” 

She took the handful of paperbacks he offered and regarded them critically. “Do they have uncouth language, violence or adult themes?” 

Loki nodded once. “Of course.” 

“Good.” She thumbed through the pages and nodded, satisfied. “It gets annoying when Erika reads over my shoulder.” 

She somehow managed to produce a small box of cookies out of a very large purse, and she pressed them into Loki's hands. “Now I'm not hearing any arguments, young man,” she said when Loki started to object. “I made too many, and there's no one at my place to eat them except me.”

“I am not some lost and helpless child who needs to be constantly fed,” Loki complained, but he kept the cookies. 

“Course not,” she replied, and patted his arm condescendingly. 

The conversation had a rhythm to it, as though it were not the first or last time it had occurred. Something twisted in Thor's chest at this, because while he knew his brother must be doing things while they were apart, must be making friends and building relationships, it hurt a bit to _see_ it. To know that he'd missed enough that when these conversational patterns developed, Thor would see them only later, as an outsider unfamiliar with their rhythms. 

Their next delivery took them to a small lab tucked in next to a pizza place, and while some of the equipment wouldn't be out of place in one of Stark's or Banner's labs, most of it seemed cobbled together out of spare parts and determination. It made him miss Puente Antiguo. 

“You're Thor? Loki's brother, right?” The scientist, Carlos, seemed excited to see him, and it reassured him somehow. Here, he was on familiar ground. 

“I am.” 

“Is it true that you know Dr Foster? The astrophysicist?” 

All right, so perhaps less familiar ground. “Yes?” 

“That's amazing.” He shook Thor's hand, but pulled back and shook it absently when tiny sparks snapped at his fingers. “I've always wanted to meet her. Her book on the mathematical principles of space-time distortion was brilliant,” he said, eyes bright with the same semi-crazed glow as Stark when he discussed an engineering hurtle or Jane herself when she encountered an unexplained phenomenon. “I'm using it to try and figure out what's going on with the Library. Well, beyond the obvious way it's overrun by eldritch creatures with control issues, I mean.” 

Thor parsed that, then parsed it again. “Jane hasn't written a book.”

“Really? She hasn't written it yet?” He slipped a well-worn notebook from the pocket of his lab coat and scribbled a note with a purple crayon. “Fascinating.” 

Thor glanced over at Loki, who shrugged. 

“The Library doesn't currently sync up with our idea of observable time,” Carlos said. “Time does run there, but the connection between here and there doesn't seem to always lead to the same _spot_ in time. It's out of sync, and it's not even _consistently_ out of sync.”

“So that's what was going on the time I went there and they had nothing but engraved stone tablets,” Loki said. 

Carlos nodded brightly. “I remember that! I was lucky Cecil still remembered most of his Ancient Sumerian and was willing to translate them. Otherwise our project would have fallen even further behind schedule.”

He turned to Thor. “You're lucky they were paper books today; those were far more difficult to carry. The stack would have been several hundred meters high.” 

Thor shifted the remaining books in his arms. “How did _you_ carry them?”

Loki smirked. “Stored them in a dimensional pocket of magically-created space-time,” he said. 

“You still need to explain to me how you did that.” 

“I did.” 

“Yes, but I need you to explain it in a way that doesn't boil down to ‘it's magic’ and require me to be a space wizard to replicate the results.” 

Loki shrugged. “It _is_ magic.” 

“Wait,” Thor said, and they both stopped to look at him. “Does this mean you could put these in a magic pocket now, and I've been carrying them for no reason?” 

“Well I couldn't have you bored—” Thor dropped the entire rest of the stack in his arms, and Loki vanished them with a scowl, off to some pocket dimension. 

“Beams, that is so cool.” That coaxed a pleased smile out of Loki, and maybe, probably distracted him from whatever petty revenge he was planning. 

Well, Thor could hope. 

* * *

Loki met the hooded figure halfway, striding down the sidewalk while staring off into the distance and pointedly not making eye contact. When they stood next to one another, Loki stopped, casually checked his wristwatch, and pulled out a book, holding it loosely in one hand. The hooded figure took the book with a crackle of static, then reached under its cloak, pulled out a baby, and slid it into his brother's arms before flickering and disappearing. 

Loki continued to pretend nothing had happened until the hooded figure had faded entirely out of sight, then he bounced the baby in his arms and huffed. 

“Should I even ask?” Thor drew level with his brother, who still rocked the baby gently. 

“They steal them,” Loki said. “They used to hold them for ransom, but it grew cumbersome, so now they simply use their stolen babies as currency directly. We'll need to find its parents, I expect.” He sighed; the baby gurgled. “It may take some time. Mortal infants tend to all look alike.”

“This one has a beard.” A full beard, at that. It was handsome, yet terrible. 

Loki glanced down. “So he does,” he said. “That simplifies things.” He settled the child on one hip, then started walking. “Well, Champ,” he muttered, “let's go find your mother.”

Champ snuffled and started chewing on Loki's shoulder. 

They slowed and stopped as they passed a cactus, and Loki looked it up and down before moving into a diner, the building a mess of black and white and purple and neon red. He waved off the hostess with a muttered “I'm only here to return a baby” and strode directly to a table where a woman in very tall leather workboots sat alone, picking at a slice of pie. 

“I've found your baby,” he said without preamble. 

The woman swallowed, then stabbed another bite with her fork. “I don't suppose you'd like to keep him for a little while longer?” 

Champ, who had abandoned chewing on Loki's shoulder in favor of trying to eat his hair, grabbed a lock and gave a particularly hard tug. Loki winced. “No, I'm afraid not.”

She reached out, and they passed the baby over. She looked down at him and sighed. “Sometimes it's nice to have time away from the people you love,” she said. 

“I know exactly what you mean,” Loki said, and Thor tried not to take it too personally that Loki looked at him when he said it. 

* * *

Thor leaned over, certain he must be mistaken, because what he _thought_ he was seeing wasn't possible. “Is that a dark elf?” he whispered, and Loki shot him a look that silenced him, for now. 

The elf, for his part, continued scanning their groceries. Calmly, even, as though there was nothing odd about belonging to a long-extinct warrior race and selling milk and tomatoes to the princes of your mortal enemies in a small local grocer. He even wore a green apron, and a small brass name badge printed in runes Thor couldn't read. 

The second they were outside, Thor turned back to face his brother. “He was, wasn't he? I thought the dark elves were extinct. What was one doing here?” 

“The back room of the Ralph's grants asylum to those who are fleeing the law,” Loki said calmly, as though this made the encounter any less strange. “Any who stay there for a year and a day are acquitted of all crimes and entered into a raffle to win a free toaster.” 

“But he was a _dark elf_ ,” Thor repeated, because maybe Loki just hadn't heard him the first time. 

“Yes,” Loki said, “I am aware. They're part of a lost civilization discovered there soon after I moved here. I defeated them all when they invaded,” he continued, “or at least all except the one Tamika took down. I froze them, but they eventually thawed and apparently joined the store.” 

Thor furrowed his brow. “That is...strange.” 

Loki laughed at that. “I agree. The first time I saw one of them on checkout duty I stabbed him. We worked it out, though. Or at least, I convinced one of the town doctors to make a house call to the Ralph's, and Uevareth charitably hasn't mentioned it since.”

“I see,” Thor said. He didn't, but he let it go. 

Night Vale seemed to inspire a lot of that. Incomprehension, then acceptance. 

“So what errand are we off to next?” Thor asked, infusing his voice with false cheer. 

Loki shook his head. “Nothing more,” he said. “We shall collect the children from school and then you can make dinner.” 

“Me? I'm a guest.” 

Loki smiled sweetly, which was the easiest way to tell he was about to say something infuriating. “I'm afraid not. You're family, aren't you? And family takes turns cooking the pasta. Besides,” he added, “Fenrir gets bitey when he's hungry.”

“I still don't think—” 

“Should I ask Old Woman Josie to convince you? Because I think we both know she can, _Pancake Chef_.” 

“Fine,” Thor said, “I suppose I can cook the pasta.” 

“Good.”

His nieces and nephew looked at him with a mixture of awe and uncertainty, and it took him a while to recognize it as the same look that he and his friends had worn around visiting adventurers in their youth. 

But he cooked the pasta, and nobody got bitten, and by the end of dinner he thought they had started to relax. 

“Let's play a game,” Hela suggested when they had cleared the dishes and moved out into the living area. 

“I think that is an excellent idea. What game shall we play?” 

“How about Life?” she suggested, and had somehow already pulled a colorful box from somewhere in the room and set it on a low table. Thor blinked. 

“Life?” 

“It's a board game.” She unfolded a small board, set out a few stacks of cards, then drew one. “Hah! I'm a scientist, like Carlos!”

Thor drew his own card from the pile. “Trepanning specialist?” 

“Ooh, that pays well,” she said, and the game began. 

The gameplay itself was almost childishly simple. They'd begin a turn by tossing something that looked remarkably and disconcertingly like an actual set of bones, then move a talisman across the board until the whole thing culminated in drawing a card to tell them what had befallen them. 

Fenrir, in the game a retired car-breeder, moved into a rainbow VW van and spent a year as a traveling tuba player. When he voiced that this seemed an odd choice, Hela waved him off with a “Nah, people do that all the time. Tamika's dad spent seven months in the wilderness with nothing but a pack mule and violin.” Loki, who had almost certainly cheated his way into a career entitled ‘Master of the Arcane Arts’, nonetheless had all of his possessions eaten by mutant silkworms and had to go deep into debt to avoid homelessness. Sleipnir, a circus acrobat, inherited a cactus farm from a distant great aunt. 

“So what's it like being an Avenger?” Hela asked him while Jormungand unfortunately invested his life's savings in a company run by sand crabs. 

Thor frowned. “You could ask your father that,” he said, and glanced over to where Loki was grimacing. 

“I am _not_ a part of your little team,” he said sourly. “At best, I am an independent contractor who helped you with a problem. Once.” 

Hela rolled her eyes, and looked at him as though to say _see what I have to put up with?_

“Do you happen to know Tony Stark's new pin numbers?” she asked, and he shook his head. “Oh well. Worth a try.”

His turn came around again and he threw the bones, then pushed his small silver frog across the board. He picked up the next card, and frowned at it. 

“What's it say?”

“I've been caught in a raid with a sandwich on whole-wheat bread, and must report immediately for government detainment?”

Hela made a sympathetic face. “You have to go to jail.” 

“And how do I get back out of jail?” 

“You don't. Sometimes in Life things happen and you just have to make the best of them.”

The game continued. Hela received regular promotions, from scientist to uber-scientist to eternal scientist, while Jormungand was framed for the crime of filling contraband pens with poisoned ink and joined him in jail. He eventually adopted a prison rat as a pet, got curtains and Netflix streaming in his cell, wrote a successful memoir creatively titled “my life in prison”, and left a secret underground crime empire to his heirs at the game's conclusion. 

“Who won?” he asked, when the last card had been turned over. With difficulty, because Jormungand had elected to drape himself over Thor's shoulders, and he was not a small snake. 

“No one,” Hela said sagely. “Life is a game we all inevitably lose; the goal is to lose it well.”

They played one more round, in which Thor was a professional taxidermist who ended up adopting seven polar bear children, before Loki announced that it was time for bed. His nieces and nephews failed to object, even though Sleipnir, at least, was by now too old for an enforced bedtime, so he suspected it was at least partly a pretense for them to be left to finish out the evening alone. 

“Let's take a walk,” Loki said, and then they were outside under the open sky, so black it was nearly dark violet and punctured with glittering stars. 

“So,” Loki said as they walked. “Did you enjoy your time here?”

“It's a nice town,” Thor admitted, “in its own way, but I don't think I should like to live here.”

“And why not?”

“Nice as it is,” he said quietly, “I don't feel as though I fit here. I may visit, but this town holds no place for me.”

Loki looked him up and down, once, and then burst out laughing.

His face heated. “What?” he said defensively.

“That is how I always felt,” he said. “Before, for more than a millennium.” Loki wiped his eyes, still laughing quietly to himself. “You know, keep this up and you might actually start to understand me.”

Thor thought he might. The way stares lingered a bit too long at the back of his neck, and he couldn't be sure if the disapproval they carried was real or in his mind, the way the skills the town valued never quite lined up with what he could do, the way they were Loki (or Luke, he supposed) and Loki's brother rather than Loki and Thor. It wore on him in a way that was perfectly bearable during a visit, but he thought if he lived here it might drive him mad.

“I'm sorry,” he said at last. Loki didn't ask him why, but he thought he should elaborate anyway. “I'm not certain if I never noticed that you felt that way or never cared.” 

“It amounts to the same.” 

“I know.” 

They came to an area where the path forked, and Loki chose the route that trailed off into gravel and sand. They had to walk single file for a ways. His boots crunched in the dirt, and it was the only sound for as far as he could hear.

After a bit of walking they came to a cliff's edge. Out in the distance, strange, otherworldly lights flickered, darting across the sky and back again, quick as thought. A battered old sign read “Radon Canyon”, and below that “☢️ danger, radioactive ☢️”, and further below that, “run”. 

Loki sank down on the edge and sat, dangling his feet off over the canyon and leaning back to look at the sky. After a moment's hesitation, Thor sat down next to him. They shared the silence and the cool night air, and for a second, it was like none of the past few years had happened. Like the nights they'd spent sitting on the edges of a shared balcony, talking about everything and nothing and watching the stars. 

“We won't ever be able to go back to the way we were,” Thor said suddenly, and even though it was obvious, even though it had been obvious for some time, it was all he could do to keep his voice even. Because some part of him, somewhere deep down, had hoped, and he hadn't realized before how utterly selfish that hope was. 

“No,” Loki said, in a tone that carried no small measure of finality with it. “Thank the beams.” 

Any time previously, that would have hurt. It still did sting, a bit, but now he thought they might be able to build something new. Not as close as they'd been, perhaps, and not as the people they once were, but perhaps that was the nature of progress. Old things being destroyed to make way for the new, even if it hurt to see them go. 

Well, hurt him. Loki looked more relaxed and whole than he'd been in years, perhaps as many as Thor could remember. 

Loki cleared his throat, and he didn't look at Thor as he spoke. “You were kind to my children, earlier,” he said. “Thank you.” 

Thor frowned. “Do you really think so little of me as to believe I'd be cruel to children?” 

Loki did look at him then, but Thor couldn't quite place the expression on his face. Bitterness, or regret, or hurt. “Asgard never saw them as children. Not really.”

Thor opened his mouth to protest, to insist that the cruelty of others was not his fault, but then he closed it again. Because however slandered he might feel by Loki's misgivings, his brother had still invited him here. He'd still trusted him enough for that. 

And it struck him, then, how much vulnerability it must have taken to invite him out here, to allow him into a space designated safe from so many of the things he represented.

“This really is the perfect place for you,” Thor said at last. “It's easy to see how highly the town thinks of you.” Something that had itched at him the entire day nudged itself to the forefront of his brain. “I think this is the first time we've gone anyplace where everyone thinks of me only as your brother.” He kept his tone light, but still, when he chuckled it had a little bit of bitterness to it. When Loki gave him a sharp look, he looked away, studying his hand where it rested on the rock and picking at chunks of gravel with his thumbnail. “Isn't that what you wanted? ‘I only ever wanted to be your equal.’ That's what you told me, on the bridge. And here it looks as though you've done better than that.” 

“I think there's something you're missing,” Loki said, staring at something far off where the stars met the horizon. “Night Vale tends to be almost brutally accurate when they categorize things. People tend to be what they say we are, for better or for worse.” 

“So you're telling me what? That they have it right, and I am the lesser brother?” He didn't believe it, he had too much confidence for that, but still the implication stung. If he were younger, less sure of his place in the world, it might have cut, scarred. 

Loki didn't react, though, with boasting or teasing or another insult. “We aren't math, Thor,” he said instead, sounding remarkably weary. “It took me too long to figure that out, but we aren't. We aren't two sides of an inequality, or an equation, or some fraction of a whole. We're a story, and we all have our part to play. Stories don't have equal signs. They just are.”

Loki smiled at him, a small, sad, _rueful_ smile. “You didn't come here today as Thor, the Thunderer, might warrior come to slay the villains and awe the mortals.” He shook his head. “You came here today as my brother, and Night Vale said yes, whatever else may have passed between us, whatever might be said by blood or choice, you are still that.”

“Oh.” _Oh_. He'd taken that for granted. Or had he? 

Loki had denied it, during the invasion, and it had been a knife that hurt far more than the one he'd shoved in his ribs. 

But beyond that there was a time, after the invasion of Earth, when Loki had shown no regret for his actions, that he'd been angry enough to deny those bonds himself. Loki alone had been willing to deny they had ever existed, that complete erasure of who they'd ever been to one another; instead, in his darkest moments Thor had chosen to think of the brother he'd known as dead and gone, replaced by stranger who had neither his trust nor his love. 

Which was worse? _You aren't my brother anymore_ or _you never were_? 

And did it matter, when they both had been wrong? 

“It seems we'll never be rid of each other,” Loki said, laying back and staring up at the sky. His feet still dangled over the edge, out over the open air and the unknown. 

Thor leaned back as well, and the residual warmth from the day seeped through the packed earth into his shoulderblades. He reached over and tentatively rested a hand on Loki's shoulder. “Thank the beams?” 

The strange colored lights danced above their heads, and the occasional ribbon of light streaked down, connecting the night-dark sky to the red-gold sands. They hung in the sky like ties binding the two together, flickering at times, ever changing their shape, but there nonetheless, real nonetheless. 

Loki's hand covered his own, and they lay there, side by side, staring up at the lights and the stars together. “Thank the beams.”

**Author's Note:**

> Today's Proverb: Say kind things. Say kind things, specifically, to [Mercia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercia/pseuds/Mercia). Read [their Marvel fic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercia/pseuds/Mercia/works?fandom_id=414093), visit them [at @mercialachesis on Tumblr](https://mercialachesis.tumblr.com/), or give them validation on [their art Tumblr (@artmercia)](https://artmercia.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> But, just as importantly, say kind things to yourself. You deserve them.


End file.
